The Antwerp Six is direct reference to a group of significant avant garde fashion designers who graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in period occurring between 1980-1981. At the Academy they learn tips and tricks of fashion designing from Linda Loppa. The fashion collective Antwerp shows a relatively different radical vision for fashion as happened at the time during the 1980s that firmed Antwerp as a notable location and recognized spot for fashion designing. The group started or came into limelight in 1988 as it rented a truck and set out for the London fashion fair with their collections. The group is consisted of the following fashion designers:
• Walter Van Beirendonck: He is a noted Belgian fashion designer born in year 1957. He graduated in 1980 from the Royal Arts Academy in Antwerp. Along with Dirk Van Saene, Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee (and Dirk Bikkembergs (graduated in 1982). He became the part of the Antwerp Six. Since 1983, he brings out his own collections of goods and he was rather inspired by the visual arts, literature, nature and ethnic influences. His remarkable color combinations and a strong graphic influence are features of his collections.
• Ann Demeulemeester: Ann Demeulemeester is a fashion designer whose eponymous label ‘Ann Demeulemeester’ is generally is being impressed upon as the annual Paris Fashion Week. She too without any exception learnt fashion design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp as lying from period between from 1978 to 1981. Therefore, she is also kwon as a member of the ‘Antwerp Six’. She worked with the artist Jim Dine, and has also been associated with Patti Smith. At present she is working on a clothing line as inspire by Jackson Pollock.
• Dries van Noten: Dries Van Noten is a Belgian fashion designer and an eponymous fashion brand. In 2005, by the New York Times he was lauded as “one of fashion’s most cerebral designers”. His sort of fashion styling is known as to be the “eccentric”, and fell out of favor as on the long period of minimalistic fashion trend of the early 1990s, that revived as during the mid 2000s. He won the International Award of the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2008.
• Dirk Bikkembergs: Dirk Bikkembergs was born in Cologne, Germany. He along with other Belgian designers like Ann Demeulemeester, Dries van Noten, Dirk van Saene, Walter van Beirendonck and Marina Yee was graduated in 1996. In 1996, the Bikkembergs label was came into force as a label considered as to and for the needs of the wider and elaborate market.
Other two famous fashion designers from the group was the Marina Yee and Dirk Van Saene.